#oneaday Day 716: They changed Feasts and I'm not sure how I feel about it

Walls have introduced a "new recipe" on their Feast ice cream, probably one of the most longstanding ice creams there has been. Feasts were around in the '80s when I was first aware of ice cream, and they are still around today. Only now they are, for what I believe is the first time, different to what they used to be.

What's funny to me is in their big banner ad, they have the original Feast, which is no longer available, directly over the new ones.

For anyone unfamiliar with a Feast, the original incarnation of them was a chocolate ice lolly with crunchy biscuit pieces embedded in the chocolate, and inside the chocolate shell was chocolate ice cream, which surrounded a hard chocolate core. Much like a Cadbury's Creme Egg, I'm sure people had their own ways of eating a Feast, but I always liked to flake the chocolate outer off, then eat the ice cream, then have the hard chocolate core as the grand finale.

Now, though, they have changed. Now you still have the chocolate outer with the crunchy bits embedded, but the chocolate ice cream has been replaced with vanilla, and the hard chocolate core has been replaced with a chocolate hazelnut core that appears to occupy a curious state somewhere between liquid and solid. It sticks to the lolly stick and retains its shape, but it doesn't have the satisfying "snap" that the old hard chocolate core did; it's more chewy and sticky.

Taken on its own terms, the new Feast is not an unpleasant experience to eat. Chocolate, vanilla and hazelnut is a good combination, and they work together. But I'm not sure they should have replaced the basic Feast model with it. The original Feast was a classic, and one of my favourite ice creams, and now it appears that it's just Not A Thing any more, because this "new recipe" has seemingly replaced the old one. At least they haven't had the gall to keep calling it "Feast Original", because, well, it's not original any more.

Apparently there is also a Feast Caramel now, which replaces the new hazelnut core with a caramel sauce centre, and I can see that being pretty good. But, again, I feel like it's not really a Feast as we once new it; the hard chocolate core was a central (no pun intended) part of the Feast's identity, and I'm not entirely sure why it has been taken away, rather than being positioned as a new variant called "Feast Hazelnut" or something. Did we have to lose the classic "Feast Original" for this?

There are, as you might expect, some people online who are absolutely furious about this. I wouldn't put myself in that category, as I found the new Feasts perfectly tasty — they're just not what I expected from a Feast, and it seems strange and confusing that they would make this change now, after so long of them being the same thing.

The common assumption, of course, is that this is an instance of enshittification, but I'm not sure that is the case; perhaps the vanilla ice cream is cheaper than the chocolate ice cream, and perhaps the chocolate hazelnut half-sauce-half-solid otherworldly substance in the middle is cheaper than a hard lump of chocolate, but I have no real way of knowing that. I'm just a bit sad to see something I've enjoyed since childhood feel the need to change fairly drastically for reasons that are not entirely clear.

Oh well. These things happen, I guess. This is, it seems, what a Feast is now. Although apparently Aldi do a good clone of the original Feast, known as Fiesta. Might have to track some of those down…

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 715: Fuck Valnet

My distaste for groups like Valnet and GAMURS is hopefully well-established by this point, but today there's a whole new disgusting chapter to the sorry saga that, so far, has resulted in an almost entirely non-functional games press in 2026. According to Lex Luddy of startmenu, Valnet has just issued new contracts to writers on TheGamer (a site which Valnet had already gutted of its main features staff) saying that they will not get paid unless their articles reach a minimum viewership threshold. As Luddy points out, the remaining staff at TheGamer — and indeed across Valnet — already had pay that was tied to overall article performance, but this new step provides a hard cutoff on whether or not they get paid at all, based on viewership.

man in gloves sitting with hands on face over laptop — Photo by Never Dull Studio on Pexels.com

This is, I won't beat around the bush, disgusting. Tying pay to article performance is already a shitty thing to do, but to withhold pay completely based on view counts is outright exploitative. And it's not as if writers on Valnet sites are getting paid fairly anyway.

As several people replying to Luddy on that Bluesky thread pointed out, this has been a longstanding problem with online media in general. It should be the writers' responsibility to produce the material, and it should be the people running the website from a business perspective's responsibility to promote that material and ensure it gets read.

Unfortunately, for a long time now, writers have been forced into a position where they have to write provocative, baiting articles in the hope that they will get clicks, because the people running the sites seemingly just… don't do anything other than lay people off. And, of course, bring generative AI into the picture, because this type of Business Idiot has no understanding whatsoever of how the actual audience has zero desire to read AI-generated content, instead believing that because generative AI is fashionable and responsible for billions of dollars of imaginary money being thrown around, they might be able to get a piece of that pie by enshittifying their website.

And the really stupid thing is that you never can predict what is going to spread across the Web and "do well" if it's left up to the writers. There is no magic formula that says "IF you write an article like this, THEN it will always succeed". There are manipulative tactics — like clickbait and ragebait — that sometimes work, but more and more people are wise to them today, and refuse to share material that falls into that category. Video game enthusiasts are some of the most online-savvy people out there for the most part, so resorting to these tactics is declining in effectiveness as time goes on.

What does seem to work — to an extent, at least — is having someone who is responsible for making sure those articles get seen: advertising the website. Effective use of a dedicated social media manager is why longstanding sites like IGN and Eurogamer are still just about hanging in there, but they are the last few remaining holdouts of a once vibrant and thriving media sector — and they have their own issues. IGN, for example, is currently butting heads with its Creators' Guild union over fair pay rises in line with inflation, and Eurogamer cut its editorial staff considerably a while back.

Once again, I have to say that I am baffled by this. Video games, as a creative sector, are bigger than they have ever been, with a broader, more diverse range of releases than ever before. So why are we, collectively, apparently completely incapable of sustaining an enthusiast press?

Moreover, retro gaming is more accessible than ever before, too, meaning that there is a worthwhile place for some retro-centric sites to spring up and do a good job of covering classic gaming material — but so far, we've seen very few outlets even attempt to step into this space, with only Time Extension online and Retro Gamer in print coming to mind outside of the unpaid (or at least non-commercial) enthusiast blog sector.

The usual answer to this is "b-but YouTubers and streamers!" and I'm sorry, I don't buy it. YouTubers and streamers have a place in the modern media landscape, sure, but they fulfil a completely different function to a traditional press — and moreover, they demand a completely different sort of attention to written material. And if you've ever accused a traditional press outlet of "paid reviews", then I have some unfortunate news to tell you about a widespread concept known as "influencer marketing".

I am sad about all this! I spent a significant portion of my life looking at my brother with intense admiration for his role in helping to shape the games press in its prime, both in print and online, and hoping that I would one day be able to follow in his footsteps! And yet, by the time I did manage to get a meaningful foothold, things were already starting to collapse. I was, somehow, too late — and I am having great difficulty understanding why, because it's not as if video games have gone anywhere. One would think with the sheer number of the bloody things being released pretty much every day at this point, a functional games press would be a desirable thing to have. And by "functional", I mean "one with full-time employees who get paid a fair salary on which they can live, enjoy the medium that they have chosen to specialise in and be able to have a good work-life balance".

And yet here we are. I despair sometimes, I really do.

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#oneaday Day 714: End of a long week

It's been a very long, stressful, challenging week, but I'm finally at the end of it. Sure, I had to work a little late this evening (by choice — I wanted to get the thing I was working on finished before the weekend so I could start afresh on some other things I need to do next week) but now it is officially the weekend. And it's a long one, too, what with it being a bank holiday on Monday.

grayscale photo of elderly man sleeping on a rock — Photo by PRIYA MISHRA on Pexels.com

I am tired. Very tired. I'm also worried that we have not-very-long to get a hell of a lot done, but no-one else seems to be panicking about it, so I'm trying not to panic. Trying. I am mostly succeeding, but there are times when I do feel a bit "OH GOD OH SHIT WHAT THE HELL". I can usually get through those times, though.

This is something I was talking about at therapy this week. One of the things that has sort of… emerged in our conversations is the fact that I do have what my therapist describes as a "wise" side, which, at times of great difficulty, anxiety or stress, can usually break through the noise of poor mental health and set me if not completely "right", then certainly on a somewhat more productive path than staring at a wall wishing the entire world would go away for a bit.

It is a challenge, sometimes, to allow that apparently "wise" part of myself to speak, but one thing I am learning to acknowledge about myself is that this part of myself does exist, and that when I do allow it to speak, it usually has something eminently sensible to say. It's not a part of me that admonishes me for making mistakes or doing things inefficiently; it just calmly, gently says to me something along the lines of "look, here are the facts, here is what you can do about it, here is what you probably should do about it" and then, barring a complete breakdown of mental health, I can usually then get on with the thing.

Of course, in the past I have experienced times where that voice can't get through. I have experienced times where things really were bad, and I knew there was no way of really avoiding the "bad". I endured, though, and I like to think my experiences have made me stronger as a result. After all, as much of a state as I consider myself to be in at times, I am still here. I am still going. I am still fighting. I haven't given up.

And oh, there have been times when it would have been easy to give up. At least one of those occasions has been immortalised on this blog, although at the time I sort of danced around the subject in the things I was writing, because I think on some level I was conscious of the fact that although I was having thoughts of giving up on everything at times, I didn't really want to follow through on them in any sort of way that would have had permanent consequences. Hell, I'm doing it now, because part of me doesn't believe that I was ever really willing to give up.

And I guess maybe I wasn't. Because, like I say, I am still here. There are things I would like to change. Things I would like to improve. Things that I wish were different. But I know all of those are things that I can, potentially, do something about. I am not helpless. I am not useless or worthless. There is reason and value to my existence.

That got a tad deeper than I perhaps intended, but it was one of those occasions when the thoughts just sort of started flowing, so I thought I'd run with it. Anyway, I'm off to go and eat ice cream and play some video games now. Have a lovely long weekend, everyone.

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#oneaday Day 713: Portal charm

Apparently Google is attempting to wind down its search feature. You know, the thing that they once did so well that their name became a verb for doing that thing. But we live in 2026, possibly the stupidest year in human existence, so they've decided that they want to stop doing the thing that they've always been well regarded for doing better than anyone else — although they have been enshittifying it for years at this point. Instead they're going to force on us the thing that C-suites the world over think everyone wants, and no-one except bootlicking cunts actually wants: the chatbot! Hooray!

person pulling a sack of garbage — Photo by Mumtahina Tanni on Pexels.com. The Internet, 2026

This is, obviously, garbage news, and anyone with any sense will already be looking for a new search engine to set as default on every device they own — even though I don't think there's a single one of them that has no AI whatsoever at this point — but there are interesting possibilities that present themselves as a result of this stupidity.

Firstly, if there's no Google search, that might finally mean we'll be free of search engine optimisation, which by extension means we might also end up free of clickbait and ragebait. Of course, the latter two options are driven as much by social media than search results — probably more so, if we're honest — but honestly, I can't say I'd be sorry to see the back of SEO. Ten Blue Links are no fun if all of them are jostling for position with articles titled "what time is Eurovision on?" or whatever.

Of course, another ugly possibility then presents itself: search engine optimisation will become chatbot optimisation, and I suspect that will be even worse. SEO can already be manipulated by bad actors to present confidently incorrect information as gospel — sometimes with nefarious intent — and chatbots are already renowned for picking up people saying obvious falsehoods as a throwaway comment in a Reddit thread, and then reporting those things as the truth. Remember glue on pizza? Yeah. Incidents like that are chatbot optimisation in its earliest incarnation.

So that brings us to the second point: what if this is what gets us to admit that the "World Wide" part of the "Web" has, in fact, been something of a failure. I think we can probably all agree that the US has dominated the Web for a significant portion of its lifespan, and it's US-based companies that are trying to reshape it in a fashion that will, they reckon, make billions for US-based billionaires who already have too many billions.

Of course, all of the businesses attempting to do this are failing miserably at that. Despite billions of imaginary dollars being thrown around on a seemingly daily basis, profitability appears to be something that continues to elude the generative AI space, and it only appears to be getting worse, with many providers switching to considerably more expensive token-based billing options for users who have, up until now, been costing these companies astronomical amounts of money.

But even if the entire generative AI space were to go tits-up tomorrow — and oh, gosh, I would love it if it did — I think a lot of damage has already been done to the original plan of the World Wide Web. The Internet is no longer a cool and exciting place to hang out and explore. It's become a sleazy, shitty inner city area where you shouldn't walk around after dark, and where you certainly shouldn't get your phone out on the street. So much of it is just there to if not outright scam you, then at least extract money from you in increasingly ridiculous ways.

I see it a lot, running a blog. I'll install a plugin that sounds like it performs a function that I would find helpful, only to find that the exact function I want to use is "only available in Premium", and of course you can't just buy Premium because it's 2026, you have to sign up for a subscription. And you can't pay monthly for that subscription because it's 2026, you can only pay for a year at a time, despite them quoting a "monthly" price on their order page. The Web in general is full of shitty, dark patterns like this designed to trick people into spending money they didn't need to spend. I have no objection to paying people for good, useful pieces of software, but not when the process of doing so is a minefield of potentially getting locked into having to shell out several hundred quid a year because you didn't see the tiny "*billed annually" at the bottom of the "BEST OFFER!" thrust in your face.

Anyway, I got a bit off the point. The main point was: the current implementation of "the World Wide Web" is shit, so what if this meant that we go back to the concept of "portals"? Portals, if you're unfamiliar, are how sites like Yahoo got started: they were designed to act as the first page you saw when you logged on to the Internet, and thus provided quick, categorised, curated sets of links that helped you to 1) find stuff that you were looking for and 2) discover interesting new stuff. Search engines developed out of portals; indeed, many former portal sites became search engines; Google itself was a bit of an outlier in this regard in that it launched as nothing more than a search engine; its intention to do one thing, really well.

I often think back to our early days of "going online" back home. After the BBS days, which we occasionally indulged in on both the Atari 8-bit and ST, we had a CompuServe subscription. And CompuServe was a ton of fun! It was a complete walled garden to begin with, and took a while to catch on to this whole "broader Internet" thing, but in many ways, retrospectively, I think that its curated way of doing things was very good. People rag on AOL for the bajillion free trial coaste… sorry, CDs that made their way around the world in the late '90s and early '00s, but they had a similar idea: present information in an interesting, clear, curated way for people to enjoy and engage with as they see fit.

Of course, this approach brings with it its own considerations: who is responsible for the curation? How does one get "noticed" with a personal project like a blog? Are these portal providers obliged to be "neutral" in terms of things like politics and suchlike? If not, how does one distinguish between a portal provider that places an emphasis on curating information that is actively harmful, and one that aligns with your own values? Probably the same way you pick a news source today, I guess.

Anyway, I don't really have an answer, but if Google is insistent on going the way of the chatbot, this is probably something we're going to have to grapple with in the next few years. The way the Internet is today just… isn't really working, at least not with the original intent of the technology in mind, so we should probably start thinking about how we can do something a bit different… a bit better.

Or we could just continue to moan on social media and never actually get anything done, I guess.

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#oneaday Day 712: Cognitive surrender

I wouldn't say I check in on Penny Arcade regularly, but when I do, I am always entertained — and I always find myself scrolling through quite a few comics and blog posts. Today, my attention was captured by this post from Jerry "Tycho" Holkins, and particularly this paragraph:

Sometimes I don't know how to feel about something because my moral superiors have not yet made a super long video. They don't always make a video about the thing I need, though. Like, I don't know if someone is still bad or if they've been exonerated. Since we don't trust any structure that would provide exoneration, and objectivity is illusory, since the law is merely another arena to sift power dynamics anyway, my guess is that their good opinion, once lost, is lost forever. Speaking of power dynamics, It must be neat to have the reins of a parallel legal system whose norms kaleidoscopically shift at a rate of one million shibboleths per second. The main issue is that it's not clear which games I'm allowed to buy. All I can do – all anyone can do – is spin very quickly in place while refreshing YouTube for the next sermon. I'm currently ablur.

man in blue crew neck shirt wearing black framed eyeglasses — Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com. I choose to believe this guy's hair only does this when he shouts.

Tycho is specifically referring to the hoohah over Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, the recent new game from ZA/UM, the company behind the exceedingly brilliant Disco Elysium, and a company mired in controversy for the way it subsequently treated the actual people who made Disco Elysium. I don't really know much more about it than that, and to be perfectly honest, I don't really give enough of a shit to look into it further. I'm sorry, I just don't.

You see, as you might expect in such a situation, moral grandstanding over the way ZA/UM has behaved in the past has been overshadowing any meaningful discussion of Zero Parades itself, with the reviewers who took it on its own terms and gave it a positive assessment — apparently it's very good! — getting lambasted by people who think they are The Most Correct Person in the Room.

The phenomenon Tycho is talking about is the disconnect one eventually starts to feel when constantly confronted by this: the situation where you want to talk about how much you like something that you have taken on its own terms, divorced from "context" — regardless of whether this was a deliberate move, or just because your particular life and social circumstances meant you had never come into contact with any "controversy" — but find yourself having to bite your tongue, because you know it's not "acceptable" to like the thing for one reason or another.

I'm not even talking about particularly controversial material here — like, even the most perverted hentai connoisseur knows when not to bring up his collection of Rias Gremory boob bouncing gifs — but rather, situations like we have here, where an entity that is tangentially connected to the thing in question is deemed to have done something so unconscionably unacceptable that it taints anything and everything associated with itself, regardless of whether the thing itself is any good or not, and regardless of whether the people who actually made the thing had anything to do with the controversy.

A lot of this stuff spreads via social media and, as Tycho says, via video platforms like YouTube and TikTok. A lot of people look to "influencers" (ugh) as opinion leaders, and wait to learn whether it's "acceptable" in the eyes of someone they believe in before even considering engaging with it. Essentially it's a form of cognitive surrender; they willingly give up their own ability to make their mind up about something in favour of blindly following everything their opinion leader of choice says and does. And this sort of person tends to hold a grudge for a very long time indeed; as Tycho says, it's exceedingly rare for anyone branded with a scarlet letter to be exonerated, while the reverse is also true: someone who has been a beloved figure for years can be quickly turned on, torn to shreds and then left to rot, never to be forgiven and never to regain their former regard, regardless of whether or not they clearly make an effort to make amends for past wrongs.

Honestly, at this point it's exceedingly tiresome. There are certain people on Bluesky I've had to mute just because their constant response to people Just Enjoying The Thing is to bring up the controversy du jour and, in many cases, cast exceedingly unflattering and negative aspersions on the people who continue to Just Enjoy The Thing. In just the last week it's happened not only with Zero Parades, but also with Forza Horizon 6, and I'm sure there will be plenty more. There have certainly been plenty of prior examples, including numerous instances of the "we will never forgive them" situation.

Look, I get it. In this revolting, shitty world we live in, it's nice to think that you have some principles and that you're willing to stand up for them. Everyone should have at least a few issues that they're willing to stand up and be counted on. But there comes a point where you're just being a tedious scold at people who are simply trying to derive some joy out of existence, and who really do not have the time or energy to give a shit about every single little issue in the world, particularly when the issues that you supposedly care about are in the extreme periphery of the thing they are trying to enjoy — and seemingly not even directly connected at all, to the average person who is not huffing Internet fumes 25 hours a day.

I'm sorry, but it is just like that. If you do try and give a shit about every single little issue in the world, you will quickly end up driving yourself insane, driving everyone who might have once been your friend away, and never, ever experiencing a day of happiness in your life ever again.

On top of that, if your idea of Being A Good Person is scolding random strangers on Bluesky rather than actually getting out into the world and making some sort of meaningful difference to the lives of people who need it, then you might not actually be A Good Person. You just want people to believe that you are.

Life is too short for that. So if you want to play Zero Parades, I don't care. If you want to play Forza Horizon 6, I don't care. If you want to boycott everything ZA/UM and Microsoft ever put out, I don't really care, either. But if you start actively getting in the way of people who simply want an escape from the shittiness of life in 2026 — or to build a warm, kind community of people who want a collective escape from the shittiness of life in 2026 — then I'm sorry, but I don't really want to know you.

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#oneaday Day 711: What to do if you inadvertently garlic your dishwasher

We had a little accident the other day: we put a jar that formerly contained minced garlic into the dishwasher. If you have never done this before, trust me, you don't want to; it leaves your entire dishwasher smelling like absolute death, and everything inside it also smelling like absolute death.

close up shot of garlic — Photo by Vadim Koval on Pexels.com

The funny thing is, I'm sure we've washed one of those jars in the dishwasher before (Andie likes to keep jars to put things in) and not had this problem. But oh Lordy, this time did we ever have a problem. And I was left to deal with it, as Andie was away on a course or something today.

I thought just running the dishwasher again might help. It did not. So I went out to Sainsbury's with the intention of buying some dishwasher cleaner, not entirely convinced that I had ever seen dishwasher cleaner for sale there, but their website assured me that it was a common thing that was usually in stock, so I took their word for it, hoping that the fact I couldn't actually check stock in a specific store wouldn't mean a wasted journey.

Thankfully, they do indeed sell dishwasher cleaner, so I picked some up, along with one of those hanging stinky things that are a bit like the things you put in your toilet, but for the dishwasher. I ran the dishwasher with the cleaner in it. Better, but still not quite right. I contemplated using the second dishwasher cleaner that had come in the double-pack I had bought, but instead thought I'd try an alternative solution. The Internet recommended putting a glass with vinegar in there, as well as spreading vinegar around inside rather liberally. So I did so, using apple cider vinegar, as that appeared to be the most commonly recommended remedy.

Now the stench has mostly gone. It now smells of dishwasher cleaner, and the hanging stinky thing, and perhaps just slightly of old garlic. It's not an entirely pleasant smell, but it's better than the stench that hit you in the face as soon as you walked in the front door that we had before.

Still, at least I feel like the dishwasher will actually wash things, now, rather than infuse them with that particularly rancid odour. So that's something, I guess.

So lesson learned: 1) do not wash stinky garlic jars in the dishwasher, because you will regret it, and 2) if you failed to take 1) to heart, some combination of dishwasher cleaner, hanging stinky thing and apple cider vinegar might get rid of the worst of the pong. And if it doesn't, I don't know… try pissing in it or something?

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#oneaday Day 710: Less than hot stuff

A while back, I tried all the Atari-branded hot sauces from a UK-based company called Sauce Shed. I really enjoyed them! I even made a video on the subject.

Since I enjoyed making this video — and one of my work colleagues is always referencing my delayed response to the Haunted House-branded sauce — I thought I'd order a selection of the Street Fighter II-themed sauces that the company had put out. This was back in February.

I remembered that the Atari sauces took a while to get to me, but were worth the wait, but this is getting a little ridiculous at this point. Then I happened to see this story shared — the company has apparently been hit with a "winding-up" petition from a client who paid them a substantial amount of money and never got what they ordered… and they weren't the only ones, either. So it looks as if the company may be in trouble, and I probably am not going to get my Street Fighter II hot sauce. This is both a shame, and £45 down the drain that I probably won't get back — but I have sent an enquiry, at least, to see if they'll provide a refund. I'm not holding my breath.

All this is a real shame, because the Atari sauces were really delicious. They covered a wide range of different sauce types, but there wasn't a single one among them that I thought was unpleasant. Some, like the Yars' Revenge hot sauce, I wish I had ordered more bottles of while I had the chance, because that one was really nice, blending the sharp kick of a hot sauce with a pleasantly fruity afterglow. Sauce Shed aren't going under because they were bad at making sauce. It does, however, appear that they may have been bad at business.

I'm not angry at them. Shit happens, particularly in the volatile world in which we live today, and I can't imagine it's easy running a niche business like a hot sauce manufacturer that specialises in custom branding deals. I just wish that they had bothered to communicate, like, at all. Maybe take down the websites that allow you to purchase things if they knew they weren't going to be able to fulfil orders — or at the very least, mark the products as "unavailable" so people don't pay up for them and then end up disappointed.

Because that's what I am, more than anything. Like I say, I'm not mad. £45 is not chump change, but it's whatever — particularly these days, when a trip to Tesco to get a few snacks can easily end up costing more than a brand new video game. I'm mostly just disappointed that I don't get to try a new selection of delicious hot sauces that are tenuously linked to some sort of video game.

But oh well. Another day will come, and there will be more hot sauce. Not just yet, though, it appears.

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#oneaday Day 709: Countdown to holiday

It's not long until Andie and I go on holiday to Center Parcs, a now-regular(ish) tradition for us. We're going for the full "Monday to Monday" experience again, and we're also going to have a spa session again, as we really enjoyed that last time.

This is where we stayed last year. This year will look similar, but with a different number.

I am looking forward to it, but I'm also mildly stressed, because just before we go away, we have two big, challenging projects at work to finish off. And they kind of need to be finished by that time. I am semi-confident that we will make it, but it is cutting things a bit fine, and I probably won't feel better about things until they are over the line, out the door and various other metaphors that mean "finished and not my problem any more".

The challenging thing is that in my new role, which partially involves QA, I am not in a position to be able to "fix" things myself — I have to just report the issues as clearly as I can, and then hope that they end up fixed. Usually they do, but sometimes it takes a few attempts at explaining something before they are finally resolved.

The projects are in a reasonable place at the moment, but not ready to go out of the door by any means. And so I suspect we're in for a busy couple of weeks; the end result will definitely be worth all the stress and hassle, but dear Lord, I will be well and truly ready for our holiday when time's up.

I'm trying not to stress about them too much. I'm not the only one working on these things, and the other people working on them are smart, talented people who know what they are doing. I am just part of a process, so I just need to ensure that my part of the process is completely successful, and with communication that is as clear as possible. Everything outside of that is outside of my control and responsibility, so that is just what I need to continue focusing on.

But yeah. I am really looking forward to our holiday. Center Parcs is such a nice environment to escape to for a little while; it really does feel like getting away from the rest of the world into your own, pleasant little bubble. I am going to enjoy just hanging out in the forest, perhaps going for a few walks around the place, spending some time in the pool and, of course, having a blissful few hours in the spa. We don't have any particular activities planned as yet — we'll probably do a few things here and there, but for the most part, it is just nice to get away from everything. The world in 2026 is a noisy, chaotic and rather unpleasant place to be, so being able to go somewhere that just feels like you're far away from all that stuff is something that I'm very much looking forward to.

From tomorrow, there's three full weeks of work to survive before I can enjoy this. It's going to be three challenging weeks, I'm sure, but as I say, the end result will be well worth it — and the opportunity to go and have some well-earned relaxation afterwards will also be well worth it.

After all, if you're going to have a holiday, you might as well have one when it will be particularly beneficial to your mental health, right?

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#oneaday Day 708: Proper adventuring

One of the things I suspect is incredibly divisive about Final Fantasy XI is that everything takes a lot of effort.

I suspect these four know one another. Or, more likely, are one person multiboxing.

You get a quest, it will inevitably involve finding some object that is a relatively low-chance drop from a very specific monster that is deep in part of a dungeon that is exceedingly inconvenient to get to.

You reach the level cap, you have to complete one of these quests every five levels until you reach 99 — though thankfully you only have to do this once per character, not once per job.

You get your "subjob", to add abilities from a second job to your main one, you have to level that as well as your main job — though only half as much, since it caps at half the level of your main job.

There are times when all this feels a bit wearisome, particularly when compared to Final Fantasy XIV, which at times feels like it's keen to take as much "friction" out of the entire process as possible. But if you think about Final Fantasy XI in different terms — not as a "theme park"-style MMO, but simply as a more traditional RPG — it makes a lot more sense, particularly now you don't have to be dependent on other people for a lot of the "main scenario" side of things.

Dungeons in Final Fantasy XIV are spectacular affairs, but they are theme park rides — completely linear, the same every time. Dungeons in Final Fantasy XI are much more elaborate: maze-like structures filled with dead ends, hidden secrets and varied encounters with monsters. The complete lack of signposting for quest-critical items — usually this involves finding something marked "???" when you target it — means that you have to actually explore these places thoroughly… or look at a guide, of course. But the longer I play, the more interesting the prospect of just exploring becomes. And the more I feel like the game has been designed around this.

If you look at a lot of Final Fantasy XI guides online, you will inevitably see a focus on levelling as fast as possible, then steamrollering your way through all the content. But the way I've been playing, it feels a lot more natural and a lot more like it's the way it was intended to be played. I've had a couple of instances where I've had to sneak around monsters much tougher than me to find a useful item, but for the most part I've found that if I treat the game like a regular, offline RPG — that is to say, fighting my way through monsters as I proceed through a field area or dungeon rather than avoiding as many as possible — it means that progress comes naturally and without you feeling like you're having to make an inordinate amount of effort to achieve that progress. As a result, the game is fun rather than a chore.

There are still points where it feels like you are "roadblocked" in certain ways — right now I'm dealing with a particularly complicated main scenario mission that involves finding specific items in three specific dungeons, along with a level cap quest that is demanding much the same sort of thing — but only in terms of the ongoing narrative. In terms of actually playing the game and engaging with its mechanics, I feel like I'm constantly doing interesting stuff and seeing new places rather than just going through the motions.

I'm going to make it through this game! I'm excited to see where it goes! Now, if I can just find an Orcish Crest, a Quadav Crest and a Yagudo Crest, plus pieces of Magicite from their three respective bases, I should be good to go and beat up the Shadow Lord. So that's what I'm going to do today, I think.

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#oneaday Day 707: My neighbours might be racists

A while back, our next-door neighbours put up a flagpole in their front garden. Not long afterwards, there was a Union Flag flying from it. I realise that this sort of thing is fairly commonplace in the US (albeit with a Stars and Stripes instead of a Union Flag, obviously) and is intended to denote patriotism, but unfortunately, here in the UK, a private individual doing such a thing in the middle of what is essentially a council estate, particularly at a time when there is no international football on the telly, often means only one thing: they might just be a teensy bit racist.

the flag of united kingdom — Photo by Peter Muscutt on Pexels.com

Granted, this is marginally less likely with a Union flag than with a St. George's Cross, the England flag, but it is still something that causes me concern.

Not long after this flagpole was put up, my wife said that when she had been outside, the Union Flag had been replaced with a rainbow Pride flag. Not long after that, the flagpole was relocated to my neighbours' back garden, which leads me to believe that the flying of the Pride flag was not their choice.

Last night, I happened to be out in the garden and I saw there was something else on the new flag besides just the usual Union of crosses. I waited for it to flap around so I could see it, and I made out the words "RESTORE BRITAIN".

My heart sank. Any time people talk about "restoring" a country, it is inevitable that what they actually mean is "get all the non-white people out of here". I thought it was a Reform UK slogan or something, but no, it turns out Restore Britain is its own thing, arguably even more hateful than Reform. I present to you selected highlights from their website, which I am not linking to because I've already had to sully my Internet history with it; I don't want to have to put you through it also:

For 30 years, this country has been run into the ground by an establishment that does not care about the interests and concerns of ordinary British people.

Mass immigration, economic collapse, woke ideology, and the relentless creep of radical Islam – everywhere you look, this country is in decline, and has been for a long time.

It took just one paragraph before mentions of "mass immigration", "woke ideology" and "radical Islam". At least one thing you cannot accuse Restore Britain of is subtlety.

Reverse Mass Migration.
Mass immigration has been a disaster for Britain. It has left us poorer, less safe, and less culturally and socially cohesive. By 2030 native British births will account for fewer than 50% of total births in Britain. By 2070, native Brits will be an absolute minority.

Dipping into their "policies" page, it's not long before we get to some Great Replacement Theory nonsense, unsurprisingly. Naturally, these "millions" of "mass immigrants" must be deported.

Use Tents, Not Hotels
Establish modular, tent-based holding facilities for so-called “asylum seekers”. These will comply with basic humanitarian standards (e.g. shelter, sanitation, medical triage), but will be deliberately austere and designed for short-term containment.

Ah yes. When I think "basic humanitarian standards", I also immediately think of the word "containment".

Make Energy Cheap, Reliable and Scalable.
Energy is the lifeblood of any developed first-world economy. First and foremost, then, it should be cheap, reliable and scalable. If that means investment in fossil fuels, so be it.

None of those woke renewables! Solar energy turned Barry's son transgender, don't you know?!

Ban the Burqa. Both the burqa and the niqab are fundamentally un-British and have no place on our high streets. Countries across Europe, including France, Belgium and Austria, have already banned the burqa.

You knew it was coming.

Sex is Biological.
Biological sex is not a social construct. It is a fixed trait, determined by genetics and encoded in every cell of the human body.

Men and women are morally equal, but not physically identical. These differences must be acknowledged, respected, and allowed to inform law-making.

Men must not be permitted to enter women-only spaces, including lavatories, prisons, and sporting contests. Anything less puts women and girls at risk.

Objective truth, not ideology, must guide governance.

In view of these principles, the Gender Recognition Act must be repealed. The state must no longer issue legal documents that permit individuals to change their sex in law. Biological sex will be recognised as immutable and recorded accordingly.

And this one.

Make Britain Safe Again.
No-nonsense policing that does what it needs to do.

Widespread stop and search back.

Accusations of racism will stop nothing, up to and including strict sentences for anyone caught carrying a knife.

I like that in this one, they're like "yeah, we know this is racist, and we don't care".

Launch an Independent Inquiry into COVID-19 Vaccines.
We would establish a truly independent inquiry into the safety, rollout, and long-term effects of the COVID-19 vaccines, especially on young people and those coerced into taking them.

Yep, they're anti-vaxxers, too. It's amazing that this one party appears to be ticking absolutely every box for being a fucking awful human being.

Restore the Right to Self-defence.
Law-abiding citizens must have the full legal right to use reasonable force – including lethal force if necessary – to protect their home, family, and property from illegal intruders without fear of prosecution.

But hey! You can kill a burglar, particularly if they're a brown person.

Repeal the Online Safety Act.
Platforms hosting lawful content must be shielded from government pressure to censor. We would require transparency in content moderation and prohibit state-directed takedowns of legal speech.

The Online Safety Act law threatens the integrity of investigative journalism, whistleblowing, and political debate.

Fears of liability lead to over-moderation, driving smaller players out of the market and empowering Big Tech.

For balance's sake, I will note that they do have a point here, albeit for all the wrong reasons. The Online Safety Act simply doesn't work. These fuckheads think it was introduced to "censor" them "just asking questions" and all that shit. But no. It was just a shit idea.

You can hopefully see now why I feel a little concerned about my next-door neighbours proudly flying a flag for this fucking hateful group of shitheads.

Honestly, at one point I felt a bit bad for stereotyping the guy (and I suspect the flagpole is almost entirely the guy's handiwork) based on the amount he seemingly drank, and how often I hear him yelling obscenities at his wife and kids. But unfortunately it seems like I might have been correct.

So that's fun!

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